


a little spin-o-rama

by jedusaur



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 08:12:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10553016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedusaur/pseuds/jedusaur
Summary: Kent never used to be this selfish.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Verbyna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/gifts).



> For Lee, who isn't in this fandom anymore.

Kent never used to be this selfish. Used to be he’d get the puck and take it in and see two options, dangle or pass, and he’d hurl it to Jack’s yearning blade without even thinking about it. With Jack holding down the slot, greed was never the smart choice.

He sees it starting to happen after he gets to Vegas. It’s hardly what you’d call a solid team--he’s the best they’ve got even as a rookie, and that’s including the D despite the fact that it’s not fair to compare offense and defense on pure merit. He starts out trusting his center like he trusted Jack, and he finds out fast that trust isn’t practical anymore.

Instead, he learns to be a puck hog like he hasn’t been in years. Coaches don’t like showboating; he got that shit berated out of him at age nine. Hockey’s a team sport, every one of them said. You’re good, kid, but you know what your problem is?

Yeah. Kent knows what his problem is.

Nobody yells at him in Vegas. The coaches look at him like a two-year-old looks at an Oreo. They’re not going to win anyway, so he might as well lay down a few highlight dekes in the process, even if he does lose the puck to a deft backcheck more often than he should. It’s not like his center would have done a better job of holding onto it.

If Kent is going down, then goddammit, he’s going down looking good.

***

The only person who’s honest with him these days is his hooker. He’s only got one, a slim tattooed guy who gives below-average blowjobs and looks nothing like Jack. Kent thinks sometimes about getting another one, but he’s already phenomenally lucky that this one has kept his mouth shut. Risking his public image on the off chance of getting that lucky twice sounds like probably a bad plan.

“Your breath is disgusting,” says his hooker. “If you can afford me, you can afford a fucking Tic-Tac, man.”

“I’m thinking about flying to Massachusetts,” says Kent.

“I hear they sell Tic-Tacs at airports,” says his hooker, who does actually have a name.

Kent flies to Massachusetts. It goes about how you’d expect.

***

He texts Jack sometimes. Jack’s number isn’t the same anymore; the person he’s actually texting is a confused 64-year-old guy from Île Bizard who once called to ask in a thick accent if Kent was his grandson. Kent hung up on him and kept texting questions about how finals were going. He really is a selfish dick.

 _you made me this way, though,_ he texts.

 _Arrête de me parler!_ the old guy responds.

 _do u think i cld get into samwell?_ asks Kent.

He doesn’t get a response to that, or to the picture he sends a few minutes later of his high school transcripts.

He actually has Jack’s new number. He’s never used it.

***

He scores a truly spectacular goal against Florida, one of those goals that make the announcers forget how to use consonants. It’s all over the internet for a whole day, everyone waxing poetic about Kent Parson, future of the league.

Kent watches the gif over and over. His center was in perfect position to receive the pass. The shot was almost impossible. Every coach he’s ever had would have kicked his sorry ass for hanging onto the puck long enough to attempt that crazy shit.

 _i never looked at your dick in the locker room even tho i wanted to so bad,_ he types but doesn’t send.

***

 _coping mechanisms_ [Google Search]

 _kent parson_ [Google Search]

 _how to be a good person_ [Google Search]

 _trust_ [Google Search]

 _umbrella power play formation breakdown_ [Google Search]

 _kent parson_ [Google Search]

 _jack zimmermann_ [I’m Feeling Lucky]

***

“Sorry,” he says to his center, who does actually have a name.

“For what?” asks his center, not looking away from a complex stick-taping maneuver.

“For fucking your girlfriend,” says Kent.

His center rips off the end of the tape and presses it down before glancing up. “The fuck?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Must’ve been thinking of someone else,” says Kent, and finishes scoring a hat trick forty minutes later.

***

Kent’s hooker quits. Kent doesn’t blame him.

***

“Listen,” says the new goalie coach. “This is so far out of my job description I’ll get fired if you tell anybody I said this, but holy shit, you have got to cough up the puck once in a blue goddamn moon. Do you have any idea how many giveaways you’ve got this season? Let me tell you, it takes serious effort for one player to affect the entire team’s possession numbers, but you are really working your tail off here.”

Kent stares at him.

“Sorry,” says the goalie coach, who does actually have a name. “For some reason nobody else is saying it, so.”

Kent scores four goals that night, and makes hard eye contact with the goalie coach when he comes back to the bench.

They still lose the game. He pretends not to notice how many of the goals against came off his giveaways.

***

_i lied. i did look at your dick in the locker room._

_Arrête arrête arrête arrête arrête_

***

Kent gets a new hooker. The new hooker blackmails him. Kent sighs and ponies up.

 _happy bday gramps,_ he texts Jack’s real number, just to even things out.

He doesn’t actually look up the old guy’s birthday on the internet. That would be weird.

***

“C’mere, Parson,” says the new goalie coach at the end of practice. He’s wearing full gear, which he doesn’t usually do. 

Kent skates over with a puck on his stick and lazily flings it under the goalie coach’s arm. “‘Sup?”

“Score on me,” says the goalie coach.

Kent grins. “Just did.”

“Do it again.”

Kent skates back to the neutral zone to snag another puck and does an elaborate forehand-backhand-forehand move that turns out to be completely unnecessary. The goalie coach doesn’t even try to stop him.

“Again.”

“Dude,” says Kent, but he gets another puck and scores again.

“How’s that feel?” asks the goalie coach.

It feels irritating. If the goalie’s not even going to try, what’s the point? “Feels like scoring on a Shooter Tutor,” says Kent.

“Again.”

Kent gets three pucks this time and snaps them into the net, top left top right fivehole.

“You’re third in the league in scoring,” says the goalie coach. “We’re twenty-fourth in the standings. You having fun?”

Kent fires a slapshot right at his chest. “If you think the team’s leading scorer is the reason we’re losing...”

“I think the team’s leading scorer is the reason we’re not a team,” says the goalie coach. “And that’s why we’re losing.”

There aren’t any more pucks in the neutral zone, and Kent isn’t about to go fishing them out of the other net. This is dumb, anyway. He skates off the ice, leaving the puck mess for someone else to clean up.

 _It’s not my birthday. Who is this?_ says the message waiting for him on his phone. He deletes it.

***

He tells the head coach what the goalie coach said. The goalie coach gets fired.

Whatever. It’s not like he was doing their goalies much good anyhow.

***

“I wanna score just as many NHL goals as you when I grow up,” says a bright-eyed kid straight off the fucking Disney Channel. Kent refuses to use the moment to grow as a person. He _refuses._

The kid’s eyelashes are about an inch long. Kent sighs. “Don’t think about scoring goals, think about setting up your teammates,” he says dutifully. He’s still not growing as a person. He can give good advice without following it.

“My teammates aren’t as good as me, though,” says the kid.

“Fuck,” says Kent, making the kid’s mom’s jaw drop. He ignores it. “I get it, I get it it, I get it. You pass even when you know the guy’s gonna flub it. Team sport. Gotta trust somebody. I _get_ it.”

“Who are you talking to?” asks the kid, bewildered.

“Some guy on an island in Quebec,” Kent says, and apologetically signs a jersey for the mom.

***

Kent passes to Broderick. Broderick flubs it.

 _i miss you,_ Kent texts Jack during the first intermission.

 _This isn’t your grandfather, you have the wrong number,_ Jack responds.

Kent goes out for the second period and passes to Broderick. Broderick flubs it.

Second intermission.

_i lied about lying. i never looked at your dick._

_What?_  
_Kenny?_

Third period. Kent passes to Broderick. Broderick passes it back, and Kent scores.


End file.
